Mount Maunganui Golf Club offer juniors chance to play with pros

Professional golfer with Mount Maunganui Golf Club junior member Gus Tustin. Photo / Supplied

As a young athlete it's not often you get the opportunity to interact with professionals in your sport, let alone join their team.

That's what 24 young golfers aged between 8 and 16 got to experience on Tuesday a part of the Futures Pro-Am tournament, held at Mount maunganui Golf Club as a prelude to today's Christies Floorings Mount Open on the Jennian Homes Charles Tour that continues until Sunday.

It was the first time the Futures Pro-Am had been held on the circuit, allowing the young golfers to play with their favourite New Zealand professionals in a bid to grow the sport and get more young people playing the game.

Mount Maunganui Golf Club's general Manager Michael Williams says the club's Pro Shop has worked hard in recent years and came up with the idea to have the Futures Pro-Am, running like a mini version of what will happen this week.

"Hopefully this generates some interest and encourages a few more young people to give the game a go," says Williams.

Among the participants was 13-year-old Mount Maunganui Intermediate student Gus Tustin, 13, and two of his siblings including Mount Maunganui College 14-year-old Rose Tustin and Omanu Primary School's Fraser Tustin, 11.

"I found it was really fun and it was nice to meet some pros and they were really kind," the keen golfer who has been playing for just over a year says.

"I played with Trevor Marshall. It was all encouraging he wasn't trying to be too interfering, he was just giving the odd tip.

"[Sir] Bob Charles was there so I got to meet him, I didn't play against him but."

Golf is a family affair for him, with his parents Matt and Rita Tustin also keen golfers and members of the Mount Maunganui Golf Club.

Gus likes the diversity of golf and would love to end up being a pro golfer one day.

The professional and experienced golfers who took part in the tournament included Marshall, Josh Geary, Mark Brown Luke Toomey, Harry Bateman, Cam Jones, Chas Craig, Fraser Wilkin, Hayden Beard, Carmen Lim, Jimmy Napier and Alex Peterson, who helped organise the event.

Young golfers and professional golfers working together during the Futures Pro-Am event. Photo / Supplied

Petersen, who only started playing golf about five years ago, is part of the Mount Golf Shop and Academy, along with Napier, and has witnessed the juniors' excitement in the lead-up to the event.

"The excitement levels from the juniors has been great, they've known about it for a couple of weeks and also in the coaching sessions with them it's been the hot topic. But probably what's even better is the excitement level of the pros, as soon as we put the idea out to them the response was awesome, sort of no hesitation, they all put their hands up straight away which is really, really cool to see," Peterson says.

He's been part of Mount Maunganui Golf Club for about two years and has helped with junior coaching pretty much from the start.

"I think we're a very junior-orientated golf club, we've got very good high participation numbers in our junior categories and we want to keep building that.

"The most rewarding thing is being able to see how much enjoyment the kids are getting out of golf, and that's why I love it."

And those budding golfers, he says, have a lot of potential - something he's keen to see develop as the years go by.

"We've got a few who have got some great potential in that regard but we also have a couple who are relatively fresh, they probably only started a couple of years ago if that, and that's really cool to see that development."

Futures Pro-Am results:
1st: Josh Geary (pro), with Nathan Tutt, Drew MacMillan.
2nd: Fraser Wilkin (Pro) with Tayne Tautuku, Taylor Agnew.
3rd: Harry Bateman (Pro) with Mason Rogers, Tobin Callahan.